I am a fool. I convinced myself that the polls were not real. I convinced myself that the world I see around me every day is not real. I hoped for a redemptive moment without seeing any penitence. You can't have one without the other.

I, along with countless others, have been trying to figure out how President Obama managed to win a second term.

Trying to discover the key statistic that would explain the defeat has become a cottage industry over the past week. Every pundit on every side has a theory, women, minorities, Hispanics, voter turnout machines, etc. All wrong. But I figured it out.

I have been trying to figure out what the problem is all week, and then I finally did. The problem is you.

Unfortunately some of the clergy are touchy-feely like you stated. I wonder if it has something to do with never having to compete. Their jobs are forever and they preach social justice BS. I think you should complain. Voting for a pro abortion Marxist is totally against Catholic principles. I guess some churches just have a more liberal clergy.

Hey saint Teddy Kennedy did get his ‘deathcare’ act passed from his grave. Next is amnesty that will forever make this once ‘Godly’ nation a third world hell hole all in the name of a religion. Yeah I know the majority of protestants are not any better, but they are not in that ‘only’ church, so they cannot be held to a higher standard. No protestant will ever get 50% of the vote to get the handle of a ‘saint’.

Archbold,
i live in an Hispanic city in CT. Even here, not a swing state, only a hot House seat: Obamba got more votes than 08 because he added more to the food stamp rolls, used the federal govt to get 2000 of them registered, and then used the entire apparatus to mobilize them to vote. It was a tidal wave of new voters.

They expanded the electorate by strengthening the progressive infrastructure ... and four more years await for him to fundamentally transform America. They are transforming the electorate. Permanently.

This process will continue as we move toward 2016. There are an endless supply of potential new voters. They come from all over the world to get here.

That's such a perfect summary of the liberal mentality: "The problem is you." All problems are always "you," singular or plural; no problems are ever "me."

In addition to its being pathetic, this attitude is debilitating, because it offers no hope for doing anything about the problem. "The problem is you!" and then the person just sits there, pleased with his own lack of responsibility.

If you say, "The problem is me," the obvious next thought is, "What could I do differently to make an improvement?" and from there, a whole life of conscious agency can grow.

I talked to a Catholic friend who planned to vote for Obama. I tried numerous times to talk her out of it, but she said even though she wouldn’t have an abortion, she wouldn’t feel right about keeping someone else from getting one, and that God would judge them for what they did. I mentioned adoption as an alternative to abortion because her grandson was adopted as a baby...but that didn’t work either. She’s a faithful Mass goer, but I couldn’t get through.

On the other hand, our pastor spoke fervently and frequently about why we must vote with the party of pro-life, pro-Israel, and anti-gay marriage, and yet there are folks in our church that I know voted for Obama. Their reasoning was not logical, nor Biblical. They were beyond convincing saying Jesus would have stood with the poor, and that was what Obama wanted to do...they didn’t care that the Dems advocated killing babies...just weird and a bit surreal when talking to them.

We went to a Catholic Mass the Saturday evening before the election. A letter from the Bishop was read to the diverse but significantly Hispanic congregation. The presiding priest prefaced his reading of the letter with a mea culpa (if you will).

I really didn’t think the Bishop’s letter was as clear as it might have been as to which candidate(s) supported abortion and which opposed. Like the GOP, the Bishop seems to have placed a lot of stock in the intelligence of the electorate/congregation.

In my area it was not Hispanics as much as the assortment of union hacks who typically inhabit the pews. The pastor read a bland, nonsensical statement which would have left all but the most engaged wondering just what the heck the Bishops were trying to tell them about this election.

saying Jesus would have stood with the poor, and that was what Obama wanted to do

These people seem incapable of observing (perhaps because they watch ABC News) that Obama never goes anywhere near the poor, choosing instead to associate only with the very, very rich. And I'm sure they didn't see the statistic that no more than 1/3 of "poverty" spending goes to the poor, with the rest going to program administration (and graft).

There's one in my prayer group. As near as I can tell, she thinks everyone should be protected from any negative consequences of their decisions, and that the government will do this with "compassion." (Her example is a brother and sister-in-law who don't have health insurance because they bought a big house and a boat, when their business was doing well.)

The fact that Obama is enthusiastically pro-abortion doesn't seem to matter, even though her own son is adopted.

11/4 at the three of our six Masses that I happen to know about, the homilies were about the primacy of the right to life over social concerns. One homily was met with prolonged applause. The others were met with approval, except that a few people walked out.

Our “youth”, university students, are strongly anti-Obama.

So I think there are demographic aspects of “Catholics” that may make generalization a little complicated.

Good Lord, we can’t do anything about the Catholic’s almost permanent loyalty to the democrat party as long as catholics even refuse to acknowledge that catholics vote as they do.

Even on FR every thread about the democrat voting block of the members of the catholic denomination, consists of catholics who are supposed to be conservative political activists, saying ‘nope, move away from this topic, do not discuss this’.

25
posted on 11/12/2012 11:56:43 AM PST
by ansel12
(Todd Akin was NOT the tea party candidate, Sarah Steelman was, Brunner had tea party support also.)

Demographics didn’t create a 150 year history for the Catholic vote, and demographics don’t mean much in a church that is a single church, a single denomination, under a single authority, and under a single teaching.

27
posted on 11/12/2012 12:30:48 PM PST
by ansel12
(Todd Akin was NOT the tea party candidate, Sarah Steelman was, Brunner had tea party support also.)

I work in 4 Catholic schools. I was shocked at how many loved Obama. The schools push Global Warming,amnesty, etc.. The church brings many illegals here, and they are enrolled in the schools. The Catholic Church is trying to grow their population. Sickens me.

I wouldn't overplay the "single church, a single denomination, under a single authority, and under a single teaching" side of the argument.

Yes, immigrant Catholics found a political home in the demagogic Democratic party which did not challenge them to rethink their notion of government.

But since VATII in this country (and probably in Europe as well) a bunch of bishops, priests, and teachers just ignored those parts of the social teaching which they didn't like. I remember assisting at a class in which the deacon taught as a wonderful doctrine something explicitly rejected in Veritatis Splendor by JPII.

As a convert I came, so to speak, "cold" to the social encyclicals and found that they did NOT AT ALL favor the top-down government and delegated charity espoused by socialists (and too many Catholics.)

I'm seeing a shift. Mind you. I've only encountered a VERY small sample. But among the Dominican friars, those older than around 50-55 TEND to be pinkos. Those younger than 50 tend to be conservative.

Among the university students whom I encounter in parish work, including many "converts", there are a several who are members of the campus "Burke Club."

And I can say this. Those I see at Mass regularly -- on Sundays and weekdays, are far more conservative than the Easter and Xmas Catholics or the "converts" who give every impression of coming to our classes or Masses to get their ticket punched. That is, the Burke Club Catholics come to Mass. The pinko Catholics, not so much.

To restate that, the Catholics who are loyal to the Magisterium and committed to Catholic piety tend to be conservative politically. On the other hand, the socialista Catholics are so far from the teaching to the Church that they are frequently incoherent. It's not just that they don't know what "proximate material cooperation" in a sin is, they don't WANT to know and resent the very activity of careful analysis of ethical or theological issues.

The major problem is that even conservative catholics have one of two responses to the catholics voting democrat for 150 years, first is, ‘no they don’t’, and second is, ‘here is why’ ‘level of devotion’ ‘theological purity’, ‘racial purity’ ‘angels on the head of a pin’ etc, which ends up basically saying that ‘no they don’t’.

Catholics have always voted democrat, almost all catholic presence in America is from immigration after the 1840s, they were almost non-existent in 1780. So wherever they come from they are members of the catholic church and are part of the democrat voting block.

The first time that Catholics voted republican in history was either 1972, or 1956, depending on the source, after Vatican II catholics moved right and voted republican 5 times 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 2004, and the white, assimilated catholics, started voting republican by small margins.

The catholic vote has probably returned to it’s historical place in regards to the democrat party, we just lived through the best window of catholic voting ever from 1972 through 2012, now things are back to normal.

I was predicting a 54% republican margin for the catholic vote in this election, I was way, way off.

30
posted on 11/12/2012 1:59:35 PM PST
by ansel12
(Todd Akin was NOT the tea party candidate, Sarah Steelman was, Brunner had tea party support also.)

and second is, here is why level of devotion theological purity, racial purity angels on the head of a pin etc, which ends up basically saying that no they dont.is nonsense.

I pretty distinctly said "Some do,"which is NOT at all, "No they don't."

One of the errors in thought addressed by Plato is that it gets us nowhere to say only a good football player is a REAL football player. There are bad football players and there are bad Catholics. In the election last week we got a suggestion of how many bad Catholics there are -- lots.

Again, my saying there are lots is not saying "No they don't."

This is why God gave us data-mining. It may be true, for example, the minorities tend to get harsher sentences than whites for some crimes. That does not mean they get the harsher sentences BECAUSE they are minorities. It could be (though I doubt it) that they get harsher sentences in spite of their being minorities. But standards like employment, domestic situation, family income and assets, academic performance, etc. may influence sentencing while ethnic or racial issues don't.

People who point directly to the correspondence between race and sentencing usually have an axe to grind.

But if one does not see the difference between "some do" and "no they don't" there's not a lot of future in the conversation.

“......the Catholics who are loyal to the Magisterium and commmitted to Catholic piety tend to be conservative politically.”

This is visibly true to me.

In my deanery there are 5 Catholic parishes. The daily Masses are full at all five of these parishes every morning, and at the one parish, which has an additional evening Mass for people who work, there are many who come to Mass daily after work.

These are families and individuals who I have been familiar with over the last 37 years.

They are politically conservative-—very much so-—and are out-spoken about it.

Yes, I acknowledge that what I’m posting here could be termed “anecdotal”.

No, no one can explain anything about blacks and religion, or politics, or many other things in regards to the black relationship with their churches and religions, we do know that even they cannot dilute the overall Protestant vote enough to make it like the overall Catholics vote.

The wider experience of 160 years of history and with what happens to Hispanics and other minorities is more revealing.

39
posted on 11/14/2012 5:36:06 PM PST
by ansel12
(Todd Akin was NOT the tea party candidate, Sarah Steelman was, Brunner had tea party support also.)

We have 160 years of almost perfect democrat voting by the Catholics, including for Obama, and this is as good as it gets, we just witnessed the best voting in Catholic history from 1972 to 2012, it is returning to it’s normal place in history.

The explanation is these threads.

The entire interest of what are supposed to be conservative Catholics, is to fight tooth and nail to deny that Catholics even vote democrat, no one seems interested in fixing it, or saving America from their voting.

44
posted on 11/14/2012 6:22:03 PM PST
by ansel12
(Todd Akin was NOT the tea party candidate, Sarah Steelman was, Brunner had tea party support also.)

If it were a Catholic thing, white, brown, black and green Catholics, city and country Catholics, immigrant and non-immigrant, Irish and German and English Catholics would all show about the same, or at least a similar, voting pattern.

If it were a Catholic thing, then all non-Catholics - white, brown, black, etc. would show the same voting pattern.

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